Japanese Regulator Approves a Search Partnership of Google and Yahoo
Share with others:
TOKYO -- Japanese regulators on Thursday approved a partnership between Google and Yahoo Japan for local Web search, clearing the way for an alliance that would control almost all of the country's search market.
The alliance has angered local businesses and ignited demands from lawmakers that Japan develop a domestic search engine to reduce its dependence on overseas technology.
The decision by Japan's Fair Trade Commission, which said in a statement that it did not see the alliance as anticompetitive and would not conduct a formal investigation, diverges from stepped-up scrutiny of Google in Europe, where authorities have opened an antitrust investigation against the Web giant.
Japan's approval of the Google-Yahoo Japan deal, announced earlier this year, is also a blow for Microsoft, which has tried to challenge Google with Bing, a revamped search engine. Microsoft had struck a deal in 2009 with Yahoo in the United States to share Bing's search technology there.
Google and Yahoo are archrivals in the United States. But Yahoo Japan is 35 percent owned by Yahoo, and is run independently from its American cousin. Yahoo Japan has chosen not to use Bing, instead forging an alliance to use Google's search engine and advertising platforms, a move analysts said was a wise one considering the infancy of Bing's search technology in Japan.
The search market in Japan, which has the third-largest number of Internet users in the world after the United States and China, had been somewhat of a global anomaly. Yahoo Japan, which has run a universe of popular sites tailored for both computers and mobile devices since 1996, dominates the search market with a 53.2 share, trumping Google's 37.3 percent, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a research firm. Its success is owed to Softbank, the deft Japanese Internet giant that owns a 39 percent stake in the portal.
The deal, which would bolster Google's share of searches in Japan to about 90 percent, has also raised concerns among local businesses, lawmakers and experts who fear the Web giant could abuse its new dominance.
An alliance with Yahoo Japan would at once make Google the country's dominant search engine. Under a tie-up announced in July, Yahoo Japan could soon begin using Google's search and search-based advertising platforms, though the two say that the services offered on top of those platforms would remain distinct. Ad sales would also remain independent of each other, Yahoo Japan has said.
First Published December 2, 2010 11:50 pm
